Using German Synonyms - Free

Introductionxiyou have learnt the words together, the semantic distinctions betweenthem are easier to recall.This book, then, aims to provide detailed information on a largenumber of sets of semantically related German words for more advancedlearners whose ®rst language is English, in order to help them extendand improve their command of the vocabulary of German. Naturally,the vocabulary is huge and diffuse and no such work could hope tocover all such sets. Ultimately, too, each word in German has itsindividual characteristics, although we shall see some of the generalprinciples on which the vocabulary is structured later in thisintroduction. A choice was made of those more frequent sets of wordswhich experience in teaching German at all levels has shown to presentmost differences from English, i.e. where the range of meanings of theGerman words does not correspond to that of the nearest Englishequivalents. However, unlike in other dictionaries of German synonymsfor English learners (Beaton 1996 and Farrell 1977), each entry hereconsists of groups of words which are semantically related in German(and thus given under a German head-word) rather than consistingprimarily of sets of German translation equivalents for speci®c Englishwords. This follows the principle established in the earlier books in thisseries, Using French Synonyms (Batchelor and Offord 1993) and UsingSpanish Synonyms (Batchelor 1994). It also re¯ects the diminishingimportance of translation in modern foreign language teaching and seeksto stress the importance for foreign learners of understanding how thevocabulary of German is structured in its own individual way andthereby to help them to acquire those distinctions in meaning which arerelevant for German.2 Understanding the organization of the vocabulary2.1 Semantic ®eldsIt has long been accepted that the vocabulary (often referred to as thelexis) of each language does not just consist of many thousands ofisolated unrelated elements (words), but that it has a coherent, ifcomplex structure. In particular, the meaning of an individual word isdetermined in part by other words of similar meaning which exist in thelanguage. If the English word street does not mean quite the same asGerman Straûe, this is because we make a difference, which does notexist in the same way in German, between street and road, so that whatwe call a road is usually different from what we call a street. There is aclose semantic relationship between these words, they are used in similarcontexts and refer to similar things, but they are distinct, in that streetusually refers to a thoroughfare between buildings in a built-up area buta road to a highway between built-up areas. We can extend this set bymore words with similar meanings, such as alley, lane, avenue, highway,thoroughfare, all of which have slight semantic distinctions in their turn